4850X2

V

vanilla_guerilla

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 3, 2005
Messages
5,895
decent box

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bundle includes 5 useless cd's. ruby rom 1.1, ancient version of power dvd (no hd dvd or br) dvd suite (?) 3dmark vantage (hoo-ray) and an install/driver cd. card itself is very long, nice black anodized aluminum shroud (no plastic anywhere).

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gets better results than my old 4870 cf set-up in warhead, farcry2. probably mostly because of the boost in memory capacity. will post results when i get a lttle time. i now have 2 multi gpu cards and both run great. i personally see no microstutter.
 
nice, im also planning to get this card, can't wait for your results
 
ill buy a 4850x2 if someone makes one that EXHAUSTS HEAT OUT OF THE CASE.

im not gonna have a 4850x2 dumping heat back into my computer. also my psu is fairly old and only has 2x6pin no 8pins.
 
Sojuuk said:
ill buy a 4850x2 if someone makes one that EXHAUSTS HEAT OUT OF THE CASE.

im not gonna have a 4850x2 dumping heat back into my computer. also my psu is fairly old and only has 2x6pin no 8pins.
Click to expand...
It's really not that bad. The extra cooling to the card is much better then the 1-2c MAX increase of all the other components.
 
i'll buy when visiontek makes one. but looking forward to your review :)
 
Sojuuk said:
ill buy a 4850x2 if someone makes one that EXHAUSTS HEAT OUT OF THE CASE.

im not gonna have a 4850x2 dumping heat back into my computer. also my psu is fairly old and only has 2x6pin no 8pins.
Click to expand...

i reversed my side panel fan to make it exhaust. problem solved. it comes with a 2x molex to 8 pin converter cable, also. i have had a sapphire hd4870 since day 1 with no problems. i have read in several places that their rma process has been streamlined, is now in the usa, and is as good as any other manufacturer (maybe except evga)
 
btw, how loud is this thing? A lot of reviews i read said this is probably the loudest card out there... and I believe theres also no aftermarket cooler for a x2 card like this except water
 
its very quiet. and very low rpm's keep it cool. 12% keeps it at 32c idle, in 25c case temp. i have only had it 1 day, but playing hours of farcry2 and tf2 havent gone over 50c, or sped up the fans at all (still on auto). much more quiet than the 4870's i had.
 
this is a brand new build, new case, (huge) psu, mb, ram, cpu, blue ray drive, everything except hdds. so cabling isnt done yet. my lian li v1000b plus 2 couldnt take 120mm hs/f except horizontally, and the air-flow was just too weird and not good enough. also was impossible to keep the aluminum clean and un-oxidized. so i got one of the $59 antec 900 from newegg a week or 2 ago. much, much better gaming case for air cooling.

with flash

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without flash

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Hahahaha for a second, I was wondering why the hell there was wood paneling on your PSU.... Oh reflections, you trick me again :p
 
some initial farcry2 numbers, @ 16x10, all settings as high as they go. using the benchmark tool that came with game.

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How easy does that shroud come off?

That mirrored PSU really messes with my head.
 
8 screws and 6 plastic push pins.

in real life the psu is kind of black, like a black true, only shinier.
 
I can see you had hard time to get those cables tidy. If that can run Crysis smoothly, I'm pretty decided to pull the trigger on HD 4850X2 - modest yet powerful in combination with i7. Good stuff.
 
Can't buy from US retailers..because of shipping prices to Europe :p I will have to stick to retail prices in pounds...but yes i wont be dissapointed with this one, that's exactly what i need. For a moment i wanted to consider GTX295, but there is no real need to have this one since GTX295 is neck to neck to 4870X2 and 4850X2 is just a bit slower to 4870X2 , but also less power hungry, not as noisy. Now it comes to question which vendor should get my money..
 
I was wondering how 4850X2/4870X2 is coping with in game physics, if i buy ATI will i miss some eye candy without physX?
 
physx is overrated imho...there really aren't too many games that stress a 4850x2, 4870x2 or 280/260...and that's w/ plenty of eye candy and playing @ 2560x1600

well pending on the games, but your overall game play experience will be great w/ any of the above cards
 
Glad you got your 4850 x2 impressions/review out before I could ... I've been way too busy with finals/reports/family stuff/shopping to have time to put out a review :( I'll try to put mine out sometime over the weekend or early next week before x-mas.
 
im glad you said about your experience between this and 4870 512mb crossfire, was wondering this myself, think i'll get one of these at some point and maybe add another one if i need it. i just cant bring myself to shell out all that money on a 4870x2.
 
it seems theres hardly any diff between the 4850x2 and 4870x2. at least not $200 worth of diff. and that 512mb on the hd4870 crossfire just wasnt cutting it anymore.
 
alg7_munif said:
Anyone else bought the card? It would be nice to share the experience here.
Click to expand...

Some impressions (I used FRAPS for fps measurements, games were run w/max settings except where noted, and my specs are in my sig):

***Go to Sapphire if you want updated 4850x2 drivers; I went to AMD's website for drivers the first time and had a very annoying time with driver errors until I read that AMD is not officially supporting this card driver-wise***

Fallout 3: Like the HardOCP review, frame rates were capped @ 60fps, but there was a lot of spikes performance-wise; the 4850x2 would go from 60fps to 20fps in all sorts of random moments, but especially when entering VATS, where fps as low as 15 could be seen (the VATS screen itself would take 10sec to load up). After unsuccessfully doing the following: (1)tinkering around with the settings, (2)playing around with the fallout.ini file, and (3)doing some research online, I decided to disable the in-game AA/AF settings and used CCC to get the settings to 8x/16x. Worked like a charm: the game actually looks better than before, there's minimal frame droppage now, and the spikes are minor; lowest fps was 40.

World of Warcraft (Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack): Initially had odd graphics difficulties: whenever I tried running @ 24-bit color/depth w/8x multisampling, I'd get a black screen. It finally took the reworked (for 4850x2) Catalyst 8.12 drivers @ Sapphire's site to get it working properly. I'm running in Maximized Windowed Mode, so I disabled Vertical Sync and Shadows (as they really bought down the fps to a crawl, around 20-30fps in some Northrend areas). It was a solid improvement: the fps now ranges from 40-195, with a rough average of around 60-85. (I am still running CCC wise on 8x/16x w/WoW).

Hope this mini look is of use :)
 
WOOOOOO ATI wont give official support!!!?? That's a deal breaker! I wont trust sapphire for update's.
 
tungt88 said:
Some impressions (I used FRAPS for fps measurements, games were run w/max settings except where noted, and my specs are in my sig):

***Go to Sapphire if you want updated 4850x2 drivers; I went to AMD's website for drivers the first time and had a very annoying time with driver errors until I read that AMD is not officially supporting this card driver-wise***

Fallout 3: Like the HardOCP review, frame rates were capped @ 60fps, but there was a lot of spikes performance-wise; the 4850x2 would go from 60fps to 20fps in all sorts of random moments, but especially when entering VATS, where fps as low as 15 could be seen (the VATS screen itself would take 10sec to load up). After unsuccessfully doing the following: (1)tinkering around with the settings, (2)playing around with the fallout.ini file, and (3)doing some research online, I decided to disable the in-game AA/AF settings and used CCC to get the settings to 8x/16x. Worked like a charm: the game actually looks better than before, there's minimal frame droppage now, and the spikes are minor; lowest fps was 40.

World of Warcraft (Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack): Initially had odd graphics difficulties: whenever I tried running @ 24-bit color/depth w/8x multisampling, I'd get a black screen. It finally took the reworked (for 4850x2) Catalyst 8.12 drivers @ Sapphire's site to get it working properly. I'm running in Maximized Windowed Mode, so I disabled Vertical Sync and Shadows (as they really bought down the fps to a crawl, around 20-30fps in some Northrend areas). It was a solid improvement: the fps now ranges from 40-195, with a rough average of around 60-85. (I am still running CCC wise on 8x/16x w/WoW).

Hope this mini look is of use :)
Click to expand...

Is there any performance difference when running WoW in windowed mode and full screen mode? Btw are you running the games with 2560x1600 resolution? If that is the case, I think that the card is not a bad card at all.
 
alg7_munif said:
Is there any performance difference when running WoW in windowed mode and full screen mode? Btw are you running the games with 2560x1600 resolution? If that is the case, I think that the card is not a bad card at all.
Click to expand...

The performance difference is drastic, averaging 30-60fps -- keep in mind that this is Maximized Window mode. And yes, I'm running both games in 2560x1600 resolution. Can't say more as I'm about to leave for a holiday party ...
 
tungt88 said:
The performance difference is drastic, averaging 30-60fps -- keep in mind that this is Maximized Window mode. And yes, I'm running both games in 2560x1600 resolution. Can't say more as I'm about to leave for a holiday party ...
Click to expand...

Thanks and happy holiday :)
 
i have tried the 8.12 and the one that came on the install disc, both have worked well. the one on the driver disc is reported by v64 to be unknow, and on gpuz3.0 it is reported as atiumdag 7.14.10.0618
 
tf2, warhead, farcry2, bioshock and dead space, they personally work for me in v64, in dx10. and i guess all the ones in the review i linked to before. has there been some issue with this with other users? i had flashing textures in tf2, but then did clean install of v64 and all was well.
 
vanilla_guerilla said:
tf2, warhead, farcry2, bioshock and dead space, they personally work for me in v64, in dx10. and i guess all the ones in the review i linked to before. has there been some issue with this with other users? i had flashing textures in tf2, but then did clean install of v64 and all was well.
Click to expand...

Well someone said sapphire will be the one to release driver's for the card. which makes me really nervous. cause in a year will new game's have error's cause this card wont be pop enough for driver support from sapphire?? I am really considering this card for awhile now. I'm just really nervous with Crossfire Sli.
 
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